Thursday 3 December 2020

The Rewilding of Stonelands Farm

 Riptide Journal, the Exeter Uni literary magazine, has themed their 2020 edition around Climate Matters to tie in with a series of seminars taking place virtually this year. I’m honoured they’ve chosen to include my poem The Rewilding of Stonelands Farm in the publication. They also asked if I’d make a video reading to accompany it and to be shown during one of the seminars — so I put this together using photos taken locally in Devon. For some years I’ve taken to photographing fly-tipped sofas and images of rural decay, well a man has to have a hobby doesn’t he? 




See this: 
a red flatbed marooned in slurry.
A perished tyre up on top 
of a rusted Peugeot raised on blocks.
A green trailer laden with sodden logs.
Last night’s storm has passed 
and everything steams 
as if the world is being poached.
A squirrel shuffles hazels, 
clanging the galvanised tin 
of a purposeless shed.
At the island end 
of a waterlogged paddock 
five black heifers wait 
for nothing they can name.
Mystery machinery 
corrodes against stone,
caught by surprise 
when the iron plague came.
On a yellow skip throne 
a one horned quad bike 
rules this junk and rubble kingdom.
Behind a high fence, 
something happened 
the Planners wouldn't like.
A snapped sign says: 
    Private Kee
Nothing moves. I wait 
and nothing moves again.
The Earth is readying itself 
to accept a death, the slow 
disassembly of molecules.
See this: empty pubs, silent schools.

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